Tagged: Lydia Fong

Barry McGee serves up his signature urban flavors, topped with a few new sprinkles in a surprise show at Ratio 3 in San Francisco. (Bring your own funky glasses to view the infinitely precise 3-D hand drawings in more than one dimension.) The rest is classic McGee…or “Lydia Fong,” as his current alias goes. Color exercises crawl aggressively up three walls like deboned Rubik’s cubes. Contrast that with the sad faces, a gaggle of meticulously rendered masks, hair monsters, and framed napkin doodles. In between the human and the abstract, other urban detritus bubbles up: surfboards, cardboard, a decomposing orange with fruit fly, a baby in bubblegum pink. Oh wait, the baby’s mine.

But what’s outside the Ratio 3 Gallery is just as cool as what’s inside. It’s a one-way alley in McGee’s own Mission Street neighborhood. Next door a woman rescues half-wolf dogs that shelters won’t take. Down a ways, murals and motorcycles take up the sidewalk. All around, there’s weed smoke and freeway noise, Chinese dollar stores and taquerias amid super-eco-chic shops. Welcome to Barry’s world.